One temptation for many religious types on the Right—accustomed to running in circles that confusingly mix and mingle strictly-business interests with the politics of piety—is to assume that capitalism can operate independent of higher values.

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This is my response to Values and Capitalism’s “Respecting not Worshipping free Markets:

Free markets are intrinsically good because they protect private property, an important Biblical principle. Property requires freedom to use and dispose of it as the owner sees fit. That is the definition of property. Property without control is not property; it is a ruse.

Free markets create just prices. Modern Christians have completely forgotten the centuries long debate over the “just price” that theologians worked on. Church theologians determined that the closest approximation to a judge price can be found only in a free market.

But let’s assume that property and just prices don’t matter and the state must control the market and force participants to act morally. Who will control the markets? Politicians are no more honest than business people. Politicians are elected from among the same people they are supposed to control. The point is, the market may not produce the outcomes arrogant intellectuals think they should produce, but no other set of humans can do it any better. It’s a non sequitur to assume that because market participants fail politicians can succeed. Politicians are not omniscient angels.

The whole point of Adam Smith was that competition in free markets control the behavior of business people far better than politicians, who are just as corrupt, greedy and money grubbing as the business people.